Plain. White. Shirt.

I finished Hubby's shirt last night at about 5:00 p.m.  Big sigh of relief!  Seems like this project has taken up all my mental energy lately!  (Not to mention blog space.)

Because we were headed out to dinner and a concert, I didn't get to wash and iron it until this morning.  I admit to being a little afraid - not for any real reason, but just because it took me so much work to make this shirt.  Things mostly turned out OK though.  The little bit of sewing machine oil that got on the sleeve while I was felling it washed out (whew!).  All the pink marking pencil also washed out.

The bad news was that the fantastic interfacing I was boasting about in the last post unfused in some areas.  Here's how the cuff looked straight out of the dryer:

Bummer!  Fortunately, I was able to re-fuse all those areas.  I hope I don't have to do this each and every time I wash this shirt.  Being all cotton, it already took me longer to iron this one than his other shirts.

I'm really happy with my work on this shirt, and I think overall I did a very good job.  But for those of you who claim I do everything perfectly, here are some boo-boos.  These are things I chose not to re-do because they will never be seen:  they'll either be tucked inside the pants or under a tie.

Rolled hem.  These are so hard!

Not-quite-edge stitching!

I learned so many new techniques with this project.  Sleeve plackets:

I kept my sleeve plackets short because I shortened the sleeve so much, which made attaching the cuff rather difficult.  I might lengthen it next time, depending on how far up his arm this one goes.

Flat-felling the sleeve to the body:

Using the felling foot for the sleeve and side seams:

I lost a bunch of time with that one, because the first thing I did was to fell the two sides of the back to each other.  D'oh!  That was a drag to pick out!

I added a few things to my base pattern.  Back shoulder pleats:

Stay channels under the collar:

And I changed the collar from the one I'd done on the muslin to one with slightly longer points.  It turns out I'd used the button-down collar before.

And here's the whole thing, front and back:

Looks just like a plain white shirt, doesn't it?!  Because I iron all of Hubby's shirts every week, it was really interesting for me to go from pieces of fabric and sections of shirt on my ironing board to a completed shirt that's constructed just like the ones I buy him at the store.

So, the next question is:  does it fit the way we want it to?  Sadly, he had to work today and left before I got up, so he hasn't tried it on yet!  I'm dying to see if it fits, but also a little afraid.  I'm going to try my hardest to get him to model it for you - but if you have a man at home you know my chances of this are about 50% at best!

And now I can finally get back to working with something with COLOR and PATTERN!!  Yay!

ETA:  He tried it on, and the fit is perfect!  Double yay!!